Legend:

Building GHC on FreeBSD is currently supported on 8.1-RELEASE or later, on {{{i386}}} (x86) and {{{amd64}}} (x86_64) architectures. One might be able to build GHC on different architectures and earlier versions but they are not maintained actively. Note that 8.1-RELEASE is used for the FreeBSD nightly builds ([http://darcs.haskell.org/ghcBuilder/builders/pgj/ amd64 head], [http://darcs.haskell.org/ghcBuilder/builders/pgj2/ i386 head], [http://darcs.haskell.org/ghcBuilder/builders/pgj-freebsd-amd64-stable/ amd64 stable], [http://darcs.haskell.org/ghcBuilder/builders/pgj-freebsd-i386-stable/ i386 stable]).

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Building GHC on FreeBSD is currently supported on {{{8.4-RELEASE}}} or later, on {{{i386}}} (x86) and {{{amd64}}} (x86_64) architectures. One might be able to build GHC on different architectures and earlier versions but they are not maintained actively. Note that {{{8.4-RELEASE}}} is used for the FreeBSD nightly builds ([http://haskell.inf.elte.hu/builders/freebsd-amd64-head/ amd64 head], [http://haskell.inf.elte.hu/builders/freebsd-i386-head/ i386 head]).

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'''Note that this section is primarily intended for developers and early adopters.''' ''If you are just want to install GHC on your system, simply use the [http://www.freshports.org/devel/hs-haskell-platform devel/hs-haskell-platform] port instead. This port does all the things described below for you. It is usually kept updated to match the latest Haskell Platform specifications.''

Probably it is possible to use a [http://www.haskell.org/ghc/download_ghc_7_6_2#freebsd vanilla binary distribution] to bootstrap the build, but one must note that it is built on 8.1-RELEASE, hence it will require installing [http://www.freshports.org/misc/compat8x misc/compat8x] in order to make it work on 9.x and later systems.

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Probably it is possible to use a [http://www.haskell.org/ghc/download_ghc_7_6_3#freebsd vanilla binary distribution] to bootstrap the build, but one must note that it is built on {{{8.4-RELEASE}}}, hence it will require installing [http://www.freshports.org/misc/compat8x misc/compat8x] in order to make it work on 9.x and later systems.

Here is a random list of thoughts about things that are good to know when working on FreeBSD.

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- The FreeBSD base system contains GCC and the GNU toolchain (at least for the time being) but they are not or only slowly updated. GCC is technically stuck at version 4.2.1 which may not be optimal for building GHC these days. Hence it is highly recommended to use the toolchain ([http://www.freshports.org/devel/binutils devel/binutils]) and GCC ([http://www.freshports.org/lang/gcc lang/gcc]) from the Ports Collection instead.

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- The Alex and Happy ports may not be up-to-date enough for building GHC (as they are tracking the versions specified in the Haskell Platform). Install {{{cabal-install}}} and install those tools using {{{cabal}}} instead.

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- The FreeBSD base system contains GCC and the GNU toolchain in older (pre-10.0) versions. GCC is technically stuck at version 4.2.1 which may not be optimal for building GHC these days. Hence it is highly recommended to use the GNU toolchain ([http://www.freshports.org/devel/binutils devel/binutils]) and GCC ([http://www.freshports.org/lang/gcc lang/gcc]) from the Ports Collection instead.

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- Clang is the default base system compiler for FreeBSD 10.0 or later. So one may try to build GHC using Clang on such systems (however, Clang can also be installed on earlier versions from the [http://www.freshports.org/lang/clang33 lang/clang33] port). It should work, but have not yet been extensively tested.

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- The FreeBSD base system is shipped with a version of `ncurses` but this may not be the latest. Unfortunately, when [http://www.freshports.org/devel/ncurses devel/ncurses] is installed one should add some extra lines to `mk/build.mk` to tell GNU make we want to use `ncurses` from `$LOCALBASE` (see above) instead, otherwise `terminfo` (which uses `ncurses`) becomes linked to `ncurses` in the base: